Now that the rebagels are out of the queue, gonna queue up some pieces that I never posted anywhere, either due to working on them in private for a little while, or having worked on them shortly before the hiatus and not posting them before it happened. A bunch of these got shared when I did art streams, but not beyond that.
I’d started spriting stuff for the ‘mod’ but this was about as far as I got before the hiatus happened. Most of the pieces come apart and have slight alterations for the 8 frame animation I’d planned out for its basic idle.
I never had the heart to finish it; I’m really happy with how it looks, but it also is very much not in Terraria’s style, which is a huge problem I have with other big content mods.
alikease replied to your post “I should be working on Fell but I keep getting distracted. Like, by...”
Voy a hacer un mod de esto
I really didn’t want to have to respond to things like this while I’m taking a break from this blog and overall community participation in general - which is why I disabled my inbox - but I don’t want people to assume that my silence on matters such as this is equivalent to permission.
That said, I really would rather people didn’t just go and make mods of my stuff.
I eventually want to make all of my Starfall stuff into its own mod if I could pull together the coding resources/help for it and make all the sprites for it myself, which would take a hella long time. I just have very specific images in my head and I can’t trust myself to get those ideas across properly to other people offering to help sprite all the necessary assets (blocks, NPCs, items, bosses, etc).
Having other people take bits and pieces of the ideas I’m adding to the overall idea here and there and adding those ideas to their own personal collections would just complicate matters, and also makes me a lot less inclined to share things with the public. So please keep that in mind.
While walking home from getting lunch I actually got some battle mechanics in mind for Archmage and Nagak.
- Nagak is basically a buffed Paladin of sorts, Super Tanky, TONS of HP, but most of his highest damage attacks would be contact or melee. Would have a projectile or two (a Flying Dragon-esque energy wave and a ground/wall-hugging shockwave), but not use them as frequently as, say, a regular Paladin’s hammer flinging, but they’d hurt a lot.
- Archmage has the equivalent HP of a wet paper bag but would teleport a lot and have a lot of magic attacks that would basically fuse together attacks from the other Dungeon casters. Bouncing lasers that explode. Homing explosions. Curvy lasers ™ . Probably some unique ones too. Basically, leaving him alive is a huge liability.
- Killing Nagak first would be a lot harder out of the box with Nagak’s high HP/tankiness and Archmage’s BS, but doing so basically makes Archmage a sitting duck since nothing would change with Archmage’s mechanics.
- Killing Archmage first, though, would enrage Nagak, causing either much more rapid attacks/more ranged spam plus inflicting Ichor, or perhaps having him start flinging his greathammer as a ranged attack at regular Paladin levels of Hammer Spam. Not sure which, but maybe both.
Inspired by trying to chainsaw a Paladin to death in-game and having multiple casters show up to take potshots.
I should be working on Fell but I keep getting distracted.
Like, by trying and failing to sprite Maluminance (IE, Anomaly’s sword), and the summoning dagger.
Terraria’s style doesn’t support gradual tapers at the appropriate size, and something intended to look deceptively delicate doesn’t work well with the need to outline everything. I either get the right silhouette in the wrong style, or the right style but it looks nothing like the actual thing (way too geometric).
I knew for a while that Awakened Anomaly would at least drop the NPC Anomaly’s wings on rare occasion, and had a thought that the other two would also drop ‘wings’ of sorts, but couldn’t figure out how to make them special.
I think, though, that they’ll all be virtually identical, only differing in aesthetics. Named Chaos Angel Wings, Form of Ichor, and Worm’s Tenacity.
They would be sort of on the low side as far as speed and flight time go, but holding down+jump will let you move horizontally through solid blocks, and holding up+jump would let you ascend through solid blocks. Chaos Angel Wings would flicker the character with a sparkle effect, almost like teleporting with the RoD, Form of Ichor would make the character glow brilliant gold with a trail, and Worm’s Tenacity would spark with cursed flames but emit a “digging” graphical effect as if the character was burrowing through the blocks. They’d all be visible in the dark, but not emit a whole lot of actual, cave-revealing light.
Downside would be that they drain either HP or MP rather quickly while using those effects. Leaning HP.
Unrelatedly: I may retire Menderbug as my builder (the model was a joking placeholder anyway) and just give all the building stuff to Arguscaris... He was the builder of the Fell crew before everything went to crap... just something for him to do in his isolation...
Randomly had some ideas for the Starfallen’s “Events” just now while zoning out. Figured I’d write them down here.
“The Blood of the Moons Runs Deep...”
Aberration’s event is the most basic. I already had the idea for it from the early Starfallen brainstorming. It’s what you’d expect; a Blood Moon-style swarm event that’s a bit more vicious than normal, with more aggressive, buffed mobs, and a few unique ones. The main ‘trouble’ with the event is that the Awakened Aberration itself attacks during the event, and enemies contacting it will be absorbed/eaten to regen the boss’ health, with the unique mobs granting buffs to it should they be eaten. Basically, crowd control is required to make the boss manageable.
In an odd turn, though, this boss will only auto-aggro to players until brought down to half health; afterwards, it will gain a permanent debuff where only directly attacking Aberration with player weapons would hold aggro (even if devouring mobs would bring it back up over half health). Without aggro, Aberration would actually run away and eventually despawn. Trap-based farming methods would not hold aggro.
“The Stars from Beyond are Aligned...”
Anomaly's was difficult for a bit to pin down, but now has some unique things about it. First, it enacts a global debuff called "Unknown Force" that prevents all player-based teleportation. This includes wired teleporters, Rod of Discord, Recall/Teleportation/Wormhole potions, and Mirrors/Cellphones. Scattered unique mobs will appear on the surface through the duration. On top of that, all the players' town NPCs will vanish without a word (they'll return when the event is over).
Over time, the player will be attacked by very strong Anomalous Clones of the NPCs, hunted down regardless of where they are in the world. As these clones are killed, the Event completion will tick up, and once all of them are gone, the player will be forcibly pulled to the surface if they are not there already, and the Awakened Anomaly will activate.
“The Abyss is Eclipsing the Light...”
Abomination's was kind of half thought up. It’ll will drastically decrease the player's light vision as if Blinded, and nearly all blocks and back walls for the entire world will be overlaid with a Shadow-Paint-esque blackout, only barely affected by lightsources. That's where my initial ideas ended. Now, special 'shadow' mobs (such as worms and 'wraiths' and Skeletron-arm-esque tethered grasping claws) would attack during the event, which would be nearly invisible against the black tiles and backgrounds. They'd be infrequent, but deal heavy damage, and may be hardcoded to be unaffected by Hunter Potions as that would defeat the purpose.
The crux of the event would be having to re-explore the Corruption in the world (since having it is required to have the NPC), in search of a special ornamented shadow orb. On a Corruption world, it would be in somewhere in one of the chasms, where the old Shadow orbs were. In a Crimson world with seeded Corruption, it would be wherever the aritificial corruption was seeded in the Underground layer or lower. Breaking that orb will give the message "The Darkness consumes you..." and activates a counter, giving you time to get somewhere less claustrophobic when the Awakened Abomination activates (similar to the Moon Lord's "Impending Doom" timer).
I’m not usually one for using existing game music to establish character themes (since that music was made for other characters or events in mind), but every time this song comes on my playlist I imagine it’s sort of the general style I’d expect the entire Starfallen encounter chain to have as boss music. IE, they’d all have sort of the same general feel and leitmotif, but with additional layers depending on who it is, and this is the sort of style I’d want them to have (sort of a dirty, heavy synth, but with layers of choir and/or orchestra).
I’m sorry this is just how I brain. Plus, Intestines is one of my favorite songs from any game and I’m just happy to share it (even though I was never any good at Shattered Soldier).
Oh, and because: bonus Trophies
...which I probably shouldn’t design without actual boss sprites but I don’t feel like making those yet because they’d be huge and I still don’t have the Terraria style down lol
“Always remember; if you need to unlock something with a key, it first had to be locked with one.”
This has been something I’ve been tossing around in my head for a while now, but I never really thought of how to discuss it here without just being a textwall, so I threw this together. Bear with me, I’m out of practice with making sprites in the game’s style.
Basically, the subject is the Starvault’s/Excelsior’s hammer. Wasn’t sure what to call it as a drop (like Anomaly’s sword, it’s one of the few obvious boss drops associated with the event that I actually thought about), since Starvault’s Hammer just feels clunky despite not being much longer than many of the existing hammers. One obvious one was Keyhammer, but I think for these purposes, Vaulthammer would be better, so as to not want to draw comparisons with a certain other famous key-themed weapon that’s already got an homage in the game.
The idea is basically that, in spite of its key motif, the hammer only has the power to seal things, not open them. As a drop, apart from its basic attack and/or hammer abilities (which implies breaking more than opening/unlocking), it could be used to re-lock chests. I don’t know what use this could have other than trolling, but maybe it could be used by people who want to use locked chests in builds without using an external editor. Idk. Like Anomaly’s sword, it’s mostly just a weird niche mechanic that exists more for theme than function.
More important is actually not how the player would use it once acquired, but what the theme means when it comes to fighting the Starvault as a boss.
You see, while he’s not particularly strong (intended to be more or less immediately post-Golem), the majority of the fight difficulty would revolve around his hammer-based attacks inflicting the player with a debuff called “Locked”, which randomly locks two hotbar slots every time it’s applied (3 in Expert; two random, plus always locking the slot that’s selected at the time of application. Depending on how annoying this is, Normal mode may also force the active slot to Lock + one random, instead of both being random).
Thankfully, it doesn’t stack, but naturally items in locked slots cannot be used, nor can anything be moved to or from those slots during the debuff duration. The random element means this could be inconsequential, or completely debilitating depending on weapon reliance, and the debuff itself would have a fairly short duration and thus be reapplied frequently for a shuffling effect.
In Expert, the Locked debuff would disable one accessory slot at random in addition to the locked slots on the hotbar. Have fun when your wings stop working.
